We're in the middle of our United Way campaign at GSK.  

Our theme this year is "Poverty is not a destination." Just because someone's path appears to lead toward poverty, that isn't paved in stone. Whether someone's dropped out of school, has a hard time making ends meet, or is sick and without adequate access to healthcare, they can change course with the right support.

Our employees' pledges will allow the United Way to fund nonprofit agencies in communities across the country that provide the necessary support--whether the need is related to healthcare, education, or financial stability.

In the US:

• 1 in 12 babies are born at a low birth weight, an 8.2% increase over the last 10 years.
• 15% of 18-24 yr-olds aren't working or in school.
• 90+ million Americans are struggling to make ends meet with salaries < $40K per year.

The good news is that together, with the United Way, we are working to change these statistics.

Since GSK matches employee pledges--dollar for dollar--the funding for local communities throughout the US doubles, enabling individuals and families to have a better chance at achieving their potential through improved education, income stability, and healthier lives. In just the first three days of the campaign, GSK employees and retirees raised $958,000--and we still have a few more weeks! With the GSK match, that's nearly $2M!

Our campaign runs through Wednesday, November 21. We'll be sure to let you know how we're progressing--but I am already so proud of our participation.

Ed. note: this story was updated to correct a typo. The first bulleted item was initially reported as "1 in 12 babies are born at a low birth rate..."

Today our CEO, Sir Andrew Witty, gave a speech in London, where he outlined measures to further advance our commitment towards greater openness, transparency, and collaboration. These are terms that are used often in business. So often, in my opinion, that they tend to lose any meaning.

So to put a little meat on these bony words, Andrew talked about building on the signs of progress we've seen as a result of our "open innovation" approach to R&D, designed to help develop new solutions for the world's most serious health challenges.

Over the past few years, we've made fundamental changes to our business model to become more open to sharing intellectual property and knowledge, and to forming partnerships to help stimulate more R&D into diseases that most affect the world's poorest people. Now, we'll set out new measures to help develop new and faster-acting treatments for tuberculosis (TB), a huge global health need where R&D has been at an impasse, and to support independent research into diseases of the developing world.

The big news out of this announcement is:

·         GSK's TB compound library to be made freely available--More than two million compounds were scanned for any that may inhibit tuberculosis (TB) bacteria and we'll publish in a scientific journal the results of this process (about 200 promising hits that could act as new starting points for the discovery of new medicines for TB). This is the first time a pharmaceutical company will make public its own proprietary compounds which have demonstrated signs of activity against TB. It is hoped this will encourage others to pursue a fully open approach to research in to a disease that causes around 1.5 million deaths around the world every year.

·         An additional £5m ($8m) funding awarded to GSK's Open Lab--In a further move to foster the sharing of scientific knowledge and learning across the scientific community, GSK will double its funding for our Open Lab at Tres Cantos, Spain. Two years since the Open Lab was established, there are now 16 research projects.

·         Detailed data from GSK clinical trials to be made available--We are fully committed to sharing information about our clinical trials, and post summary information about each trial we begin and shares the summary results of all of our clinical trials, whether positive or negative, on a website accessible to all. We will also create a system that enables researchers to access the detailed anonymous patient-level data that sit behind the results of clinical trials of our approved medicines and discontinued investigational medicines.

Not surprisingly, there was a lot of chatter about this announcement online today.

Katie Thomas (@katie_thomas) of the New York Times wrote "Glaxo Opens the Door to Data on Research." Matthew Herper (@matthewherper) of Forbes wrote about the announcement--"With Transparency Pledge, Glaxo Makes Promises No Other Drug Company Has"--and then tweeted it. This started a rich discussion about our motivation for doing this. Sally Church (@MaverickNY) wrote "@matthewherper it doesn't jive with the general ethos really. If it truly changes things then great but... leopards, spots etc." There were a number of tweeters who had similar skepticism.

And we get it. Trust me. The pharma industry, and GSK, are often criticized, no matter how genuine our intentions. This is something we know we need to overcome.  

But I think Andrew outlined our motivations best:

As a truly global healthcare company, I believe we have a responsibility to do all we can at GSK to use our resources, knowledge and expertise to help tackle serious global health challenges. However, the complexity of the science and the scale of the challenge mean that we cannot solve these problems alone. We need to take a different approach--one focused on partnership, collaboration and openness. By being more open with our clinical trial data, we also hope to help further scientific understanding. I am pleased with the progress we have made so far to evolve our business model but we recognise there is more we can do and the new initiatives outlined today will enable us to build on this work.

We expect to have our feet held to the fire on this, to ensure that we deliver on our promises. Let's keep the conversation going.

Over the past many months there have been countless journal articles, news reports, and blog postings in the US on the topic of comparative effectiveness research or "CER," a type of research that compares available medications and other treatments in order to help doctors and patients make decisions about which treatment is most appropriate for an individual patient.  Comparative effectiveness has gotten a boost from the Affordable Care Act, which provided federal funding for CER to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).  In addition, individuals and groups from all types of healthcare backgrounds--clinicians, patients, health policy researchers and payers--have laid out justifications for CER and how such research should be conducted, analyzed, communicated, and used.

At GSK, we are focused on determining how to properly design, and apply, CER in the real world.  Many of our colleagues are working to understand how to develop and deliver medicines and vaccines to meet many unmet medical needs and to help providers ensure that these medicines and vaccines will be used for the right patient at the right time.  Recognizing the importance of CER to answering questions about who should receive a specific medication or treatment, we are also working to ensure CER is conducted in a robust manner with appropriate rigor, transparency, and strong methodologies. 

However, we also believe that research alone is not sufficient--we know that research findings must be replicable, clearly communicated, properly contextualized, and broadly disseminated.

We are excited by a new series of articles this week in Health Affairs that focus on the communication of CER findings, who should be able to share study results, and how best to share this information--including the role that pharmaceutical companies should play .

While everyone realizes that CER has an important role in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our healthcare system, pharmaceutical companies, despite their extensive expertise in their products, face significant challenges in speaking about CER studies.

In Health Affairs, a group of authors from the National Pharmaceutical Council, including Jack Bailey, SVP, Policy, Payers and Vaccines, GSK, discuss how Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations and policies may limit how pharmaceutical companies communicate information about CER findings and may even hinder companies' efforts to respond to CER studies involving their products. The authors call for FDA to provide clear guidance that allows companies to participate meaningfully in discussions about CER studies.

CER is anything but simple, but whether it is questions about the design, communications or more topics to come, we look forward to being a part of the conversation.

Being a doctor's kid, I knew for a long time I wanted to be a doctor. I expected to spend my career as a tenured medical professor, contributing mightily to the scientific knowledge base while being a fabulous clinician who saved lives. And yet I ended up with a career in industry, where the medicines I work on touch many people's lives. It has been a fulfilling but unexpected journey.

The North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation invited me to speak at their annual Women in Science Scholars conference. In addition to receiving scholarships, these students are paired with GSK scientists who volunteer to be their mentors. I was honored to address these bright young women from 29 universities across North Carolina.

I wanted to offer something useful to women at the beginning of their science careers. There's been so much rhetoric about whether women can "have it all," but to me it's not about "having it all." It's really about "choosing what you'll have."

Choosing what you'll have within the life you create--career, partner, family, environment--requires self knowledge, honest conversation with your partner (if you have one), and insight into what consequences, both negative and positive, you're willing to accept as a result of your life choices. For instance, pursuing a career in academic medicine will require many years of long hours and nights away from home. Does that suit your personality, your talents, and your vision of home life during that time? 

At the start of my career, I wanted to believe that if I worked hard enough, I would not need to compromise. I strived for perfection--a perfect career, family, house, and life. It was exhausting. Now, we run our home with four kids and two of our parents in comfortable chaos. Our aesthetic is more "well lived-in" than "designer show house." My husband and I share household responsibilities and pursue our careers knowing our first priority is our family. It's taken us 18 years to get here, and it's not perfect. It's a work in progress--and we let it evolve.

"Let it evolve." This is the best career advice I ever received, and advice that I have given to many over the years. Be open to possibilities. Your career is not a chess match where you have to stay five moves ahead. At the beginning of my career, it was easy to think that every decision I made about my career was permanent or had permanent consequences; that there was no turning back or changing my mind. Now, with the benefit of time, I understand that this is untrue. The strategy to let it evolve has proven most valuable. It was soon after I received this advice that I found myself interviewing for a job at GSK.

At that time, I very much saw myself in academics, not in industry, so I wasn't too serious about the interview. It was also two weeks after the birth of my third child and I was nursing and didn't want to leave him at home. So, the baby came with me to the interview. During the interview, I was overwhelmed and wonderfully surprised. The quality of the science was fabulous and so were the GSK staff. Most importantly, they seemed like they were having a great time doing it. I decided to give it a try. I took a leap of faith and let it evolve.

A few years after joining GSK, I took on an influenza project that no one else wanted, but I gave it my best. I was working on this when both the bird flu epidemic and swine flu pandemic hit. This project provided a platform for me to demonstrate leadership both within and outside of the company. What an incredible experience it was to help prepare for an epidemic. A project that no one else had time for ended up being a pivotal one in my career, and one that has led me to many other opportunities.  You can't always see where the next opportunity will come from. You get out what you put in and let it evolve.

The NC GSK Women in Science Scholars have much to look forward to as their science careers evolve.